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Child Survival and Health Grants Program

Although impressive progress has been made since 1990 in preventing child and maternal deaths, much remains to be accomplished. Every day in 2015, 17,000 more children will live and 650 more mothers will survive childbirth than in the past. However, another 17,000 children and 800 mothers continue to die each day around the globe.*

In 2012, the world rallied around the Child Survival Call to Action to end preventable child deaths within a generation, which was later expanded to include maternal mortality. The USAID-led 2014 and 2015 Acting on the Call events and reports demonstrate progress and recommit to doing what is needed to meet these targets.

Effective partnerships between governments, non-governmental actors (civil society, private sector), and communities are critical to accelerate country progress toward ending preventable child and maternal deaths. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that low-cost, community-based approaches can support healthy household behaviors, improve maternal, newborn, and child health outcomes, and reduce newborn and child mortality even in the world’s poorest communities.* Examples are found in community health worker (CHW) programs where CHWs are supported both by the health system and by community health promotion groups, such as participatory women’s groups and Care Groups.*

For almost three decades, USAID’s Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP) strengthened the capacity and leveraged the resources of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, and civil society to respond to shifting policies and strategies in 65 countries. Collectively, they served over 147 million children under the age of five and almost 74 million women of reproductive age in marginalized communities. Using the lives saved tool (LiST), CSHGP partners demonstrated that community-based programs can help achieve EPCMD goals.*

Between 2008-2012, the program awarded grants to 19 citizen-supported international NGOs to work alongside Ministries of Health, academia, and a range of local partners in 23 countries. Their objective was to develop, test, and facilitate the expansion of innovative and promising community-oriented solutions to improve the coverage of life-saving interventions across a continuum of care for mothers, children, and newborns.

A range of knowledge products featured below – as well as the collective findings from a cohort of Child Survival and Health Grants – leverage the CSHGP’s robust implementation science platform, and reinforce the importance of community engagement in health and local systems to achieve health outcomes, particularly as countries transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals. The evidence, experience, and lessons of the CSHGP are relevant not only to the policies and programs in USAID’s 24 priority countries, but also in MCSP and other global and bilateral mechanisms aimed at strengthening community health platforms. The CSHGP’s findings are part of the greater effort to accelerate progress for maternal and child health worldwide. Focus on community engagement, knowledge, and resources should be expanded and integrated into strategies for health systems strengthening, accountability, and learning to accelerate progress toward EPCMD.*

Can the Addition of a Quality Improvement Collaborative Improve Performance and Retention of Community Health Workers in Benin? A quality improvement collaborative together with financial incentives improves performance but not retention when compared with financial incentives alone.

Shifting the management of a community volunteer system (Care Groups) from NGO staff to Ministry of Health staff in Burundi: Care Groups supervised by community health workers produced similar improvements in child health and nutrition outcomes as those supervised by NGOs

Report of the End of Project Evaluation of the Evidence-Based Interventions for Improved Nutrition to Reinforce Infant, Child and Maternal Health in Cambodia Project: An Innovative Project for Lasting Behavioral Change and Improvement in Child and Maternal Health and Nutrition

Final evaluation of the Vurhonga Community-based Tuberculosis Directly Observed Treatment Short course (TB DOTS) Project, Mozambique: An effort to increase the tuberculosis control performance through a Care Group Volunteer network

About MCSP

The Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) was a global, USAID Cooperative Agreement to introduce and support high-impact health interventions with a focus on 25 high-priority countries with the ultimate goal of preventing child and maternal deaths.